304: Introductory Seminar / Literature Romanticism
SS 2007

“Emotion Recollected in Tranquillity”:
Wordsworth’s Concept of Poet ... ic
Creation
in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

Olivia Frey

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ... 1

2. Wordsworth’s Concept of Poetic Creation: An Interplay of Sensory Perception, Emotion, Memory, Reflection, and Imagination ... 1
2.1. The Basic Operations Involved in Poetic Composition ... 2
2.2. The Role of the Imagination ... 4

3. The Poetic Process Mirrored in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” ... 5
3.1. The Poetic Expression of the Transformative Operations Involved in the Process of Composition ... 6
3.2. The Work of the Imaginative Faculty ... 10

4. Conclusion ... 14

5. Bibliography ... 16

1. Introduction

“[P]oetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” William Wordsworth declares twice in his “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads1 (242, 250). When reading this statement, one might have the impression that, from his point of view, poetic composition is solely based on the expression of emotions, excluding any reasoning or reflection about them. Of course, as he is a poet of the Romantic period, sensibility plays a significant role in his theoretical works, as well as in his poetry. However, it has to be taken into account that Wordsworth thoroughly qualifies both occurrences of this declaration: on the one hand, he explains that “poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply” (“Preface” 242). On the other hand, he adds that poetry “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated […] [and] is qualified […]” (250). Thus, despite the fact that emotions form the basis and the subject of poetry, the composition of a poem requires the interplay of certain intellectual powers, particularly the memory, contemplation and imaginative shaping of emotions.

In this context, it is worth examining how Wordsworth actually turns his concept of poetic creation into a concrete poetic act. For this purpose, his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” serves as an illustrative example, because here, the poetic process is not only traced on the level of surface content and on the level of discourse, but also in the emotional development of the lyrical I, who speaks as a poet. Although the poem does not actually deal with the writing of poetry, it nevertheless mirrors the interplay of the powers necessary for poetic composition.

2. Wordsworth’s Concept of Poetic Creation: An Interplay of Sensory Perception, Emotion, Memory, Reflection, and Imagination

In general, Wordsworth is far from being a poet who gives purely objective and detailed descriptions of his physical environment. On the contrary, he continually emphasises that “the mind should inform the senses [and] that sensation should not become too exclusive and tyrannical” (Rader 131). This implies that, in his poems, the naturalistic description of an object or of an action only provides the framework for the expression of emotions: “the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling” (Wordsworth, “Preface” 243). Therefore, Wordsworth’s poetic theory is basically an expressive, not a mimetic one:

The appropriate business of poetry, […] her appropriate employment, her privilege and her duty, is to treat of things not as they are, but as they appear; not as they exist in themselves, but as they seem to exist to the senses, and to the passions. (“Essay, Supplementary to the Preface”2 63)

However, the poetic process does not exclusively consist in giving voice to one’s emotions, but is based on a certain emotional and mental development, at the core of which is the transformation from a “primary emotion [to a] secondary emotion” (Owen 42) effected by a combination of the powers of retrospection, reflection, and imagination.

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1 In parenthetical references cited as “Preface”